Oil Spill​—It Will Never Happen Here

‘AN OIL SPILL in Prince William Sound? Never. It will never happen. The channel is very wide and very deep. There are no navigational hazards.’

So the public were led to believe. Unfortunately, on Friday, March 24, four minutes after midnight, the Exxon Valdez, a supertanker carrying 53 million gallons [200 million L] of crude oil, strayed a mile and a half [2 km] off course, ground its bottom over the jagged rocks of Bligh Reef, and ripped gaping holes in its hull. Over 11 million gallons [42 million L] of crude oil gushed out into the pristine waters of scenic Prince William Sound, just below Valdez, Alaska.

When the catastrophe happened, an unlicensed third mate was in command, and the Coast Guard supposed to monitor with radar the course of the Exxon Valdez couldn’t. And when the spill did happen, both the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company and the Exxon Corporation were unable to fulfill their contingency plan for controlling oil spills.

Deep-sea divers were called to inspect damage to the grounded Exxon Valdez. One of the divers reports:

“Going to the tanker by boat, we saw that the oil was already inches deep on the water. We couldn’t even see the water in the wake of our boat. Once on the supertanker, the first concern was safety. Was the ship stable, or would it roll over on top of us? It rested on Bligh Reef, near an edge that dropped off into water several hundred feet deep. If it did shift with the incoming tide, it would go down all the way to the bottom, perhaps breaking open and releasing the remainder of its oil​—42 million gallons [160 million L] of it.

“We inspected just about every square foot of the ship: the hull, inside the tanks, the framework. All the while the oil was gushing out. It didn’t mix with the water but streamed to the surface very fast. When we entered the tanks, our air bubbles would disturb pockets of oil, force it out, and it would swirl around our faceplate. We were not there to make repairs, only to determine the damage.”

Alyeska’s promise was to be at the spill with containment booms and oil skimmers within five hours. Nothing was done for ten hours and very little for the next three days. Gone were three days of calm when booms and skimmers could have limited the damage. On Monday 70-mile-per-hour [110 km/​hr] winds blasted across Prince William Sound and whipped the oil into a frothy mixture of oil and water called mousse.

Everyone began blaming everyone else. Alaskan officials, residents of Valdez, and the Coast Guard blamed both Alyeska and Exxon for dawdling and letting the first three days of good weather slip by. Some blamed the Coast Guard for cost cutting that caused it “to replace its radar in Valdez with a weaker unit that failed to warn the ill-fated tanker it was heading for a reef.” Exxon blamed the state and the Coast Guard for withholding permission to use dispersants to break up the oil slick.

In two months the oil slick had traveled 500 miles [800 km] from Bligh Reef, washed up onto a thousand miles [1,600 km] of coastline, and blanketed a thousand square miles [2,600 sq km] of the beautiful waters of Prince William Sound. It didn’t stop until it passed Kenai Fjords National Park, rounded the tip of Kenai Peninsula, and turned into Cook Inlet. It also pushed farther south to pollute Katmai National Park and Kodiak Island.

Thousands were hired to work on the cleanup of beaches. One man working on the cleanup was interviewed, and he described the method and the results:

“Workers start at 4:30 in the morning and work till 10 at night with high-pressure hoses, some using cold sea water and some using hot steam mixed with sea water. These powerful streams are shot into the gravelly beaches, driving the water underground. The oil that is two or three feet [0.5-1 m] below floats to the surface. Then water from the hoses drives the oil into the ocean, where it is held by containment booms until skimmers come and suck it off. They get two hundred to four hundred barrels [30,000-60,000 L] a day from a section of beach 200 yards [200 m] wide.

“For a two-week period, they do this again and again, getting the same amount of oil each time. Then they have people with absorbent rags sit on the beach and wipe off each rock individually. The beach looks clean, but you stick your hand down between the rocks and into the sand three and a half inches [9 cm], and your hand comes up covered with this black goo. This after two weeks of cleaning. Go back three days later, and three to six inches [8-16 cm] of oil has oozed back up. The next tide will return it to the sea.”

Futile? Perhaps, but the work pays well. One worker makes $250 a day and says: “I figure I’ll pull $10,000 out of this, easy.” Another worker made nearly $2,000 for a seven-day, 12-hour-a-day workweek. “We got two beaches clean today,” he said, “but with the tide coming in, I’m sure tomorrow those beaches will be just the same.” Some beach areas in Prince William Sound are buried in three feet [1 m] of oily muck.

Once the Exxon Valdez had ripped holes in its hull and spilled 11 million gallons [42 million L] of its oil into Prince William Sound, what would have helped cope with the disaster? Prompt action with booms and skimmers the first three days when the sea was calm might have contained the spill enough to keep it within the sound, not letting it get into the Gulf of Alaska.

Would the use of dispersants have helped? It does not seem so. Dispersants do not work in calm water; the sea must be agitated to mix in and distribute the chemicals so they can do their work. They would have been useless on the first three calm days, and when they might have helped on the fourth day in the storm-tossed waters, the gale force winds grounded the planes needed to spray these chemicals. Their use is controversial, anyway. An article in the Anchorage Daily News explains:

“Dispersants work a lot like detergents. When sprayed onto the surface of an oil slick and agitated by the sea, the dispersants break the oil into smaller and smaller particles and cause them to diffuse in the water. Environmentalists don’t like dispersants because, they say, the chemicals just spread the oil through every level of water, posing a threat to life forms from top to bottom.” Even so, dispersant chemicals are less effective in cold water, “hardly work at all on Prudhoe Bay crude oil,” and “are almost useless more than a day after oil has been spilled.”

Moreover, the dispersants are themselves toxic. The claim is made that those used on the mammoth oil spill from the supertanker Torrey Canyon affecting the coast of France in 1967 caused more toxicity than the oil did. “Plant and animal life was wiped out.”

Pete Wuerpel, director of emergency communications for Alaska, confirms what has already been stated by the beach worker quoted: “Oil won’t stand still. It won’t go away. Even the oil now on some of the beaches will be carried off by wave and tidal action to other beaches. It is a continuing disaster. To clean beaches is a mind-boggling venture when you consider the depth that the oil has penetrated. You may clean the surface, but wave and tidal action will cause the oil below to percolate back to the top. At what point do you recognize the ineffectiveness of man’s efforts?”

Wuerpel concludes that man’s technology cannot yet cope with massive oil spills. He says that at this point the job must be left to nature. Others agree. Marine biologist Karen Coburn declared: “The fact is that we don’t have the ability to recover more than about 10% of the oil in a large spill, even under the best of circumstances.” One report says: “Nature could take a decade, maybe longer, to remove the last traces of North America’s largest oil spill from the waters of primeval Prince William Sound,” this according to scientists who study oil spills.

Two weeks after the accident, the Anchorage Daily News headlined: “Oil Spill Cleanup Battle Is a Lost Cause. Crews Win Small Victories, but Experts Say Sound’s Recovery Is Up to Nature.” It continued: “The people from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have said all along that the war was unwinnable.” They have monitored every major spill in the last decade, including the 65-million-gallon [250 million L] spill by the supertanker Amoco Cadiz off the French coast in 1978. Their verdict: “In none of them have humans ever come close to mopping up the oil.”

[Box on page 6, 7]

Supertanker, Superpolluter

Imagine a ship that is as long as a one-hundred-story building is tall. A ship whose prow crashing through the ocean waves is nearly a quarter of a mile [half a km] ahead of the man steering it. A boat so vast that some have even wondered if its movements might be affected by the rotation of the planet. This is the supertanker, or ultra large crude carrier, and it is no work of the imagination; such vessels and others nearly as large ply the seas in great numbers. Why? Well, ours is an oil-hungry world. Tankers, by dint of their great size, have proved to be an economical and lucrative method of transporting that oil.

But as recent events have made painfully clear, large tankers also have their drawbacks. For one thing, their great strength is also their weakness. Their awesome bulk and mass can work against them, making them notoriously difficult to maneuver and handle. When the ship’s helmsman wants to stop the ship or turn it quickly to avoid danger, the basic laws of motion (in particular, that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force) take on truly epic proportions.

For instance, when an 800- to 900-foot [240-270 m] tanker is fully loaded and plowing along at its usual pace (the Exxon Valdez, 987 feet [300 m] long, carrying 53 million gallons [200 million L] of oil, going 12 miles per hour [19 km/​hr]), shutting off the engines does not make for a sudden stop. The ship will coast for another five miles [8 km] or so. With the engines in reverse, the ship still needs two miles [3 km] to come to a halt. Anchors will not help; if lowered, they would catch hold of the seabed and then simply be torn from the decks by the tanker’s momentum. Maneuvering a tanker is likewise a daunting challenge. It may take nearly half a minute for the rudder to swing after the wheel has been turned. Then the tanker may take an agonizing three minutes to lumber through the turn.

With the helm perhaps 1,000 feet [300 m] behind the bow, 150 feet [45 m] from the far side, and 100 feet [30 m] above the sea, it is not surprising that tanker collisions do occur. Accidents, whether by running aground or by collision, can mean sprawling oil spills. The once pristine coastlines of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, as well as those near the earth’s poles, have all been sadly blighted.

But tankers do not foul the oceans solely by means of their catastrophic accidents. Tankers dump some two million tons of oil into the seas every year. Past studies have shown that most of this oil may come from more routine matters, such as unscrupulously flushing the oily residue from empty tanks while out at sea. As Noël Mostert wrote in his book Supership, “every tanker, however well managed, drops some of its oil into the sea in some form or another; badly managed ships are ceaseless polluters and, like garden snails, can often be followed by the long iridescent trail of their waste.”

Ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau once made a powerful comment on mankind’s drastic assaults on the environment. He said: “We are vandals of the earth. We are destroying everything we inherited.”

[Picture on page 7]

Beaches cleaned one day are covered with oil the next

[Picture Credit Line on page 2]

Mike Mathers/​Fairbanks Daily News-miner

[Picture Credit Line on page 5]

Cover photo: The Picture Group, Inc./​Al Grillo

Oil Spill​—What It Did to Animals

THE spill’s toll on wildlife in its first few months was tragic. A special dispatch from Alaska to The New York Times stated: “Casualties are evident from islands close to Valdez, where thousands of seals are now giving birth to pups on contaminated beaches, to the far reaches of Katmai National Park on the Alaska peninsula 300 miles [500 km] southwest of here, where bald eagles, brown bears and sea lions struggle with a toxic habitat. The ecological toll of the spill thus far includes more than 20,000 birds of 30 species, 700 Pacific sea otters and 20 bald eagles.” The actual numbers may be five times higher, according to biologists making the tally. Most of the victims are never found.

In Katmai National Park is the largest concentration of brown bears in the world. Officials worry about these huge animals, some ten feet [3 m] tall and weighing 1,200 pounds [540 kg]. They have been prowling the beaches eating oiled birds and fish. “What will happen to these animals as the oil gets into their food chain?” officials wonder. Eagles feeding on the dead fish and birds are dying. They expect deaths among the bears “as the toxic oil accumulates in their systems.”

Similar worries are felt in Kenai Fjords National Park, where 90 percent of its 240-mile [390 km] east coast has been hit by oil. A state biologist assigned there said: “Right now I’m still finding dead sea otters on the beach. Bald eagles feed on them, so I’m also finding bald eagles. Here I am a scientist with a Ph.D. and as I watch these oiled birds trying to take off I start to cry.”

Hundreds of others may cry and thousands feel like crying. People who care labor to clean the oil off birds and otters, many of which die anyway. It is heartbreaking work for those concerned with the preservation of wildlife.

The number of sea otters in Prince William Sound was estimated at from 10,000 to 15,000. One biologist feared that they faced total extinction. Another agreed that they “will be totally wiped out.” These estimates may have proved to be overly pessimistic; other estimates of one third lost are bad enough. In some places untouched by oil, the otters are plentiful; in oil-polluted areas, few are seen. The truth is, no one knows how many thousands perished. When sea otters die in an oil spill, they sink to the bottom. No count is possible, only estimates based on decreased sightings.

Most people are moved by the death of thousands of birds and animals in oil spills but seldom think of the small and the microscopic victims numbering in the millions, even millions of millions. They too are important and are not forgotten by their Creator. “How many your works are, O Jehovah! All of them in wisdom you have made. The earth is full of your productions. As for this sea so great and wide, there there are moving things without number, living creatures, small as well as great.”​—Psalm 104:24, 25.

The oily sludge dispersed into the water eventually sinks to the bottom. There it poisons microorganisms, zooplankton, the beginning of the food chain for a rich variety of wildlife. Thence the toxic chemicals ascend the ladder of life, ultimately getting into man himself.

Man is not above it all. He is a part of it, and he has responsibility toward it. It is a responsibility given him by God, his Creator. “I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals,” Jehovah told the first man. Man was made in the image of God, with the attributes of God​—wisdom, power, justice, love. These qualities equipped him to exercise loving dominion over the earth and its plants and animals. The earth and its fullness were put in his charge, not to be exploited and ruined, but to be cared for and guarded. (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15, Today’s English Version) Jehovah God has concern for his creation. Do we? We should, for he declares that he will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.”​—Revelation 11:18.

[Box/​Picture on page 10]

God’s Concern for Animals

God is concerned:

“Sparrows . . . not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”​—Matthew 10:29.

He requires consideration:

‘Six days work, on the seventh desist, that your bull and your ass may rest.’​—Exodus 23:12.

“You must not muzzle a bull while it is threshing.”​—Deuteronomy 25:4.

“You must not plow with a bull and an ass together.”​—Deuteronomy 22:10.

“Should you see the ass of someone who hates you lying down under its load, . . . you are without fail to get it loose.”​—Exodus 23:5.

“Who of you, if his . . . bull falls into a well, will not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”​—Luke 14:5.

He provides for survival of the species:

“In case a bird’s nest happens to be before you . . . , you must not take the mother along with the offspring.”​—Deuteronomy 22:6.

He provides food:

“The sabbath of the land must serve you people for food, . . . and for the wild beast that is in your land.”​—Leviticus 25:6, 7.

“You open your hand​—they get satisfied with good things.”​—Psalm 104:28.

“Observe intently the birds of heaven, . . . your heavenly Father feeds them.”​—Matthew 6:26.

He provides wisdom needed for survival:

“They are instinctively wise: . . . In the summer they prepare their food.”​—Proverbs 30:24, 25.

He requires showing appropriate respect:

“You must not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”​—Exodus 23:19.

[Credit Line]

Anchorage Times photo/​Al Grillo

[Pictures on page 8, 9]

Far left: Harbor seal pup, three days old

Left: Yellow-billed loon

[Credit Line]

Anchorage Times photo/​Al Grillo

Below: Sea lions

Prince William Sound

Oil Spill​—What It Did to People

VALDEZ has undergone a population explosion since the oil spill of March 24, 1989. The town has gone from 2,800 to over 10,000. Exxon has hired thousands at high pay to clean up the environmental damage from the oil spill. The influx of thousands has brought social and economic disruptions not easily absorbed by the permanent residents of this formerly quiet little town.

Pete Wuerpel, director of emergency communications for Alaska, highlights some of the changes brought about by the overwhelming flood of people looking for jobs at high pay. Wuerpel said during an interview:

“The long-term impact on Valdez may be more severe than can be estimated right now. The tremendous surge of people into Valdez has overtaxed its facilities. In the seven weeks following the spill, the telephone company has gone from 60 trunks to over 170. The sewers, electric power, small-boat harbor, city dump, city road system​—none were designed to cope with the present demand. During April, traffic jumped from 3,000 to 9,600. Airport volume, normally 20 flights a day, peaked at over 680. The impact is absolutely incredible in terms of the ability of the town to sustain it.

“The crisis caused by the population explosion has been overshadowed by the emphasis on spilled oil and polluted beaches, dead birds and sea otters, threatened hatcheries and shellfish losses. The economy has been disrupted, pay scales are unbalanced, businesses struggle to find reliable help. Rising prices strain the pocketbooks of those on fixed salaries.

“None of this is to downgrade the calamities of the oil spill but to put in better perspective the total tragedy and the effect it has had on people. In my opinion the disruption of the lives of the residents of Valdez has been overshadowed by the more dramatic publicity given to the destruction of thousands of birds and animals.”

Some of the longtime residents of Valdez were interviewed. How has this explosion of people into their town affected them?

An employee for the telephone company gave his views, as follows:

“It is now two months after the spill, and it’s total chaos in Valdez. Thousands are still flocking in to get high-paying jobs. All kinds of people. Some the law is after, and they get picked up. Prostitutes come to ply their trade. Children no longer have the run of the town. Parents keep close watch on them, and they certainly should. Some children are neglected, both parents working long hours for Exxon. Money mania has infected many.

“Prices have soared. They double overnight, and in a week’s time, they double again. You have a house to rent? You can get $500 a night for it. Some bedrooms bring almost as much. You can even rent space for a couch. Houses rent for $5,000 or $6,000 a month​—one report claimed $13,000 for one house. Cars have been rented out for $250 a day.

“Wages paid by Exxon have skyrocketed. Businesses can’t compete. Their employees quit to work for Exxon. New workers stay for a while, then they too go to work on the spill. It’s rough on restaurants. They stay open 24 hours a day, serve thousands, and some have had to change work forces four or five times in the last two months​—they lose them to Exxon’s inflated hourly wages. The hospital had half their employees quit.”

The lure of all this money​—very understandable the temptation for someone short of cash and long on bills! How easy to reason, ‘Well, I can work on Sunday and make $30 or $50 an hour, work 12 hours, and get double time because it’s Sunday. I can pay off the car, pay off all my bills’! But you are also neglecting your family, and spiritual values may go down the drain. ‘But I’m only going to do it for a short time, temporarily, to get on my feet!’ you tell yourself. Maybe so, maybe not.

More ominous are some of the emotions unleashed by frustrations. One person said:

“Many have focused their anger on Exxon, and radical extremes of behavior surface. You have a disruption of the value system, a distortion of it. You have people that through their frustration and anger gravitate toward conduct that would normally be abhorrent to them. They are angry at what the oil spill has done to beautiful Prince William Sound and to the thousands of birds, otters, seals, and other wildlife that have long been their pride.

“Such anger has led some to run Alyeska cars off the road. Bomb threats have been made. Even death threats have been made in Valdez against the president of Exxon. Hundreds of extra security police have been hired.”

A substitute teacher says:

“Many children get themselves off to school. I know of a five-year-old in kindergarten who gets herself out of bed in the morning because her mommy and daddy left hours earlier to work on the oil spill. She gets her breakfast, goes to school, returns home, eats supper, and is alone until her parents return at nine or ten at night. What is this doing to her, what is it telling her? Money has blinded some parents, and their children are suffering. Children in school are too stressed to work. Teachers don’t push them but read stories to them, let them play games.”

A housewife finds rudeness and anger:

“Overcrowding adds stress and frustration, which open the gate to anger and outbursts of temper. When supplies were limited, some women buying groceries have had others take their bread or milk. In restaurants latecomers have pushed in and taken tables others have waited an hour for.”

This man expresses his concerns about what is happening to people:

“The impact on the area has been pretty severe in that the population has almost tripled. We’ve gone from a town of about 2,800 people to over 9,000 people. There’s a problem getting supplies and just moving around town. Traffic in this small town has added congestion that makes just moving around a source of frustration and stress.

“Job opportunities have changed dramatically. Offers of employment paying from $20 to $50 an hour have made it difficult to keep a balance in your priorities. It’s challenging to keep materialism from overwhelming family responsibilities and spiritual values. My wife and I have also had numerous calls from friends in the states as far away as Florida and New York and down in Texas and out in Oregon. They have called about the opportunities for work here.

“We know that the economy is difficult everywhere at this time, but we’ve recommended that they not come. They are Jehovah’s Witnesses, as we are, and we try to keep our spiritual priorities uppermost, attending meetings and talking to others about God’s Kingdom. We feel that that is best for them also, and it is not easy to do under the present stressful conditions in Valdez. Materialism smothers spirituality, and it is rampant here.

“How true are the Bible’s words at 1 Timothy 6:10: ‘The love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.’”

These interviews were held two months after the oil spill. It was predicted that the cleanup work on the environment would have been completed by this time​—September 15 was the projected date. When the cleanup work on the oil spill ends and when the thousands of jobs fold up and when the flood of dollars dries up, the longtime residents that have kept their spiritual values intact through it all will make the necessary adjustments.

But it may be years before Valdez will ever again be the quiet little town it once was.

[Blurb on page 12]

“It’s total chaos in Valdez”

[Blurb on page 12]

Threats of violence

[Blurb on page 13]

‘Love of money, root of evil’